army, his marriage with Lady Milford is arranged for him as if he had noclaim to be consulted. The president blurts out his plan with brutalcoarseness, and urges it in language which he knows will rouse his son'sanger. So when he appears in the Miller house he makes himself as odiousas possible. Diplomacy and finesse are weapons not found in his armory,though he is a courtier and a successful politician. He is simply acynical brute in high office. In truth his conduct is so very inhuman asto convey an impression of burlesque. He seems copied from some ogre ina fairy tale.

But if President von Walter appears now like a melodramatic caricature,it is partly because times have changed; for Schiller was not withouthis models in the recent history of Wuerttemberg. During the period ofKarl Eugen's worst recklessness--the decade beginning with 1755,--he wasloyally abetted by two men, Rieger and Montmartin, who made themselvesthoroughly odious. Rieger was a man of talent and knowledge, but withoutheart and without conscience. It was he who managed the cruel andlawless conscriptions whereby Duke Karl raised the desired troops forFrance.[56] Young men were simply taken wherever they could befound,--pulled from their beds at night, or seized as they came fromchurch,--and forced into the army under brutal conditions of service.Many a Wuerttemberg family could have told a tale of barbarityessentially similar to that recounted by the lackey to Lady Milford inthe second act of Schiller's play. Remorseless oppression of the people,for the purpose of raising money to be spent on the duke's costly whims,became the order of the day.

Still more brutal and cynical in his methods than Rieger was CountMontmartin, who was made President of the State Council in 1758. Acunning and wicked intriguer, he lent himself without scruple to thegratification of his master's lusts and caprices. The daughters of theland were unsafe from his machinations if they had had the misfortune toattract the wanton eye of their sovereign. In 1762, wishing to be rid ofhis powerful rival, Montmartin trumped up a charge that Rieger wasengaged in treasonable correspondence with Prussia. The result was thatRieger was publicly disgraced. Meeting him one day on parade the dukeangrily tore off his military order, struck him with his cane and thenshut him up in the Hohentwiel, where he lay for four years withoutlight, table, chair or bed. In like manner the patriotic publicist,Moser, was imprisoned for five years, without trial and withoutsentence, because he had withheld his consent to the duke's high-handedproceedings.

Such was the political system that had afflicted Wuerttemberg duringSchiller's childhood. It furnished him with his dramatic 'mythology', asit has been called. The name may be allowed to pass, only it should beremembered that _this_ mythology was simply history. The rapier-thrustsof the dramatist were not directed against wind-mills of theimagination, but against political infamies that make one's blood boilin the reading and that would have moved a more spirited people to hangtheir rulers to the nearest tree. This should be borne in mind by anyone who, in the milder light of a later and better era, is disposed tocarp at Schiller for caricaturing the nobility. He was not concernedwith aristocracy in general, but with the particular kakistocracy thathad disgraced his native land. And all that he did was to exhibit it asit was, or lately had been.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 51: 'The New Heloise', Part 1, letter 62.]

[Footnote 52: The adjectives are John Morley's; "Diderot", Chap. VII.]

[Footnote 53: "La premiere fois que je la vis, ce fut a l'eglise",--saysDiderot's St. Albin, in recounting the beginning of his infatuation forSophie. So with Faust and Margaret, and with Schiller's beautiful Greeklady in 'The Ghostseer'.]

[Footnote 54: "Schillers Leben und Werke", 15. Aufl. (1900), p. 297. Inearlier editions of Palleske's work, which appeared originally in1858-9, Louise was further characterized as 'the crushed heart of theGerman people'; and the sentence, 'which had to recover from thosewounds', read: 'which is beginning to recover'.]

Mannheim, famed for the geometric regularity of its streets, was inSchiller's day a city of about twenty thousand inhabitants. Since 1720it had been the capital of the Bavarian Palatinate, and under theElector Karl Theodor it had acquired some distinction as a nursery ofthe arts. We have seen that Schiller, coming thither from Suabia,imagined himself escaping from the land of the barbarians to the landof the Greeks. In the year 1777 the Upper and Lower Palatinate wereunited, and the Elector transferred his residence to Muenchen. For thiswithdrawal of the light of their ruler's countenance the Mannheimerswere compensated in a measure by the establishment among them of aso-called National Theater. There was no German nation at the time, butthere was a very general interest in the German drama. Lessing's famousexperiment at Hamburg, though it turned out badly, had set peoplethinking. Playwrights and actors were learning to regard themselves nolonger as purveyors of mere amusement, but as the dignifiedrepresentatives of a noble art having boundless possibilities ofinfluence. The public was becoming interested in the principles ofdramatic construction and in the criteria of excellence. Scholars werebeginning to inquire whether the stage might not again become what ithad been for the ancient Athenians. And so the way had been preparedfor a serious conception of the theater and for experiments like thatat Mannheim.

The management of the enterprise was placed in the hands of BaronHeribert von Dalberg, a young nobleman (born in 1750), who had given noevidence of unusual fitness for such an office, but was a connoisseurand a gentleman. He devoted himself zealously to his work and soon madehis theater famous. He was courteous and hospitable, kept an eye openfor promising talent and enjoyed the role of Maecenas. His systemprovided for regular meetings of his actors, at which plays werediscussed, reports rendered and grievances ventilated. For the rest hewas not a man of ideas, but a follower of tradition. He disliked to takerisks and often missed the mark in his judgment of persons and of plays.He continued until 1803 to act as intendant and occasionally tried hishand at dramatic composition, or the adaptation of a Shaksperian play,All told, his services were such that the Mannheiniers have deemed himworthy of a statue.

Among the actors whom Baron Dalberg's enterprise had assembled atMannheim were three or four of notable talent. Thus there was Iffland,of the same age as Schiller, who was destined to win fame as an actor,playwright and manager. Like Diderot, Iffland believed ardently in themoral mission of the drama. He was himself a man of character who hadtaken to the stage against the wish of his kinfolk, and now his hobbywas to refine the language of the stage and to elevate the actor'sprofession. He was an industrious and thoughtful player, who gavecareful attention to the little matters of mimicry and personation andseldom failed to please. Another was Beil, a greater actor in point ofnatural endowment, who relied more upon vigorous realism than uponstudied refinements. Then there was Beck, who was at his best as aportrayer of youthful enthusiasm and sentiment. His nature was akin toSchiller's and a warm friendship sprang up between the two.

When Schiller arrived in Mannheim, late in July, 1783, Dalberg was inHolland. There was nothing going on at the theater, and the swelteringtown, deserted by such as could get away, was suffering from an epidemicof malarial fever. But the faithful Streicher was there and friendMeyer, the manager, and Schwan, the publisher, whose vivacious daughter,Margarete, gradually kindled in the heart of the new-comer another faintblue flame which he ultimately mistook for love. His first concern wasto write to Frau von Wolzogen, who had loaned him money for his journey,a detailed report of his finances. He was the possessor of fifteenthalers, whereof he had reserved five for the return to Bauerbach. Hisfriend Meyer had found him a nice place where, by dispensing withbreakfast, he could eat, drink and lodge for about two thalers a week.Hair-dresser, washerwoman, postman and tobacconist would require, alltold, one thaler. So he hoped to keep afloat in the great world at leastthree weeks, and then,--back to his heart's home in Saxony! The lettercontinues:

Oh, I shall long to be soon, soon, with you again; and meanwhile, in the midst of my greatest distractions, I shall think of you, my dearest friend. I shall often break away from social circles and, alone in my room, sadly dream myself back with you and weep. Continue, my dear, continue to be what you have been hitherto, my first and dearest friend; and let us be, all by ourselves, an example of pure friendship. We will make each other better and nobler. By mutual sympathy and the delicate tie of beautiful emotions we will exhaust the joys of this life and at the last be proud of this our blameless league. Take no other friend into your heart. Mine remains yours unto death and beyond that, if possible.

One sees that the writer of this letter had lived quite long enoughin his idyllic retirement, and that his benefactress had judged thecase wisely.

We who do not live in an epoch of emotional expansion have the right toget what amusement we can out of this note of high-flown sentimentalism.At the same time its instructive aspect should not be lost sight of.When a youth of twenty-three, battling with the vulgar prose of life,falls into such a tone in writing to a middle-aged lady who hasbefriended him; when he lets his imagination brood upon the comingluxury of tears and of beautiful emotions; when he is so patheticallyeager to reign without a rival in the heart of his friend, and to assureher of his everlasting loyalty in the world to come,--how shall weexpect him to express himself when he undertakes to speak the languageof strong feeling in works of the imagination? Evidently we must beprepared for all things in the way of sentimental extravagance.

After two weeks of idle waiting Schiller was able to report that Dalberghad returned and was showing himself very friendly. The man was 'allfire,'--only it was gunpowder flame that would not last long. The genialintendant insisted that Schiller should by all means remain in Mannheim.'Fiesco,' now in print as a tragedy, should be put upon the stage atonce; 'Louise Miller' should be taken under consideration, a performanceof 'The Robbers' be given for the author's special gratification, and soforth. At first Schiller was little disposed to bank upon this effusivekindness. His plans went no further than to effect a sale of thestage-rights of his two plays and then to return to Bauerbach. But thelures of Dalberg finally prevailed and in September he made a contractfor a year's employment as dramatist of the Mannheim theater. He was tofurnish one entirely new play, in addition to those he had on hand, andto have as compensation three hundred florins, the copyright of all theplays and the receipts of a single performance of each of them. For amoment the future looked tolerably bright. He saw in his mind's eye anassured income of more than twelve hundred florins, which would provideamply for his needs and enable him to pay his debts.

But his plans went all wrong. In the first place, the pestilent fever,which he fought with giant doses of quinine, proved very intractable andheld him in its grip for months. He was unable to work and fell into asort of mental coma. In a letter of November 13 he describes himself aseating Peruvian bark like bread; and six weeks later he was stillsuffering from the effects of his unlucky midsummer plunge into themiasmatic air of Mannheim. In other ways, too, the new situation proveda disappointment. Social demands involved him in expenditures far inexcess of his modest calculations, while the intervals of relief fromphysical incapacity were filled with a hundred distractions which lefthim no time for sustained mental effort. And so he drifted into thewinter without accomplishing anything more notable than the finalrevision of 'Fiesco'.

About this time he was elected a member of the so-called 'GermanSociety', a learned body which enjoyed the protection of the Elector.This little honor was highly valued by Schiller, since it made him acitizen of the Palatinate and gave him an assured social status. On theother hand, his emergence into the light of day as a respectablefunctionary was not without its disadvantages, since his creditors nowbecame importunate. There were pressing duns from Stuttgart and fromBauerbach, but the debtor could not pay. He became involved in a painfulcorrespondence with his father, who had undertaken to guarantee a smalldebt of his son provided that another larger one be paid so and so. Whenthis hope failed, the old captain lost patience and began to deal outcounsel, reproof and warning with a lavish hand. He recommended his sonto save the pennies and live more economically; to return to medicine;to marry a wife; to remember his Creator, and so on. To all of which theperplexed Friedrich could only reply with fresh promises, excuses andrecommendations of patience. In like manner he put off Frau von Wolzogenuntil she began to lose faith in him. A sharp letter from her broughthim to his knees with a humble apology, but it was years before he couldpay his debt to her.

The first performance of 'Fiesco', the adaptation of which to the stagehad cost its author such a world of trouble, took place on the 12th ofJanuary, 1784. As played it differed a good deal from the publishedversion, and not alone with respect to the catastrophe. Thus the painfulepisode of Bertha was worked over into something less revoltinglyhorrible. In the stage version, instead of being brutally violated, sheis abducted by a tool of Gianettino, but rescued and restored to herhome unharmed. With this change made it would seem as if there were lessreason than ever for her being cursed and sent to a subterraneousprison-vault. Nevertheless Verrina's curse was allowed toremain,--chiefly, as one cannot help surmising, that the girl might berescued with _eclat_ in the fourth act. (The rescue scene in 'TheRobbers' had been a great success.) It has already been noted that theoffensive quarrel between Julia and Leonora was omitted and that Leonorawas allowed to live. And there were other such changes. Schiller hadbeen impressed by an actor's criticism of his florid and violentlanguage. He accordingly removed or toned down a few blemishes of thiskind, but without making a radical revision of the style. Even in thestage version there is quite too much of rant and fustian.

The Mannheimers took but little interest in 'Fiesco,'--it was tooerudite for them, as Schiller explained to Reinwald some monthslater.[58] Republican liberty, he went on to say, was in that region asound without meaning; there was no Roman blood in the veins of thePfaelzer. In Berlin and Frankfurt, however, the piece had met with goodsuccess. We cannot blame Schiller for trying to extract comfort fromthese bits of evidence that the prophet was not without honor save inhis own country, though we may question his implication that republicanideas were just then less rife in the Palatinate than in Berlin andFrankfurt. The fact is that the lover of republican ideas must have beenthe very person to feel the keenest dissatisfaction with 'Fiesco.' Whereit did succeed, its success was due to causes having little to do withpolitical sentiment. The Berlin triumph was equivocal, being the triumphnot so much of Schiller as of one Pluemicke, who took high-handedliberties with the original text and made it over, in both language andthought, so as to suit the taste of the Berlin actors. This northernversion, thus diluted with the water of the Spree, was presentlypublished by the enterprising pirate, Himburg, and proved a formidablerival of the genuine edition. The play was tried at several theaters andwith various endings,--curiously enough Pluemicke made Fiesco commitsuicide in the moment of his triumph,--but it never became reallypopular. It was translated into English in 1796, into French in 1799.

Much more favorable was the reception given to 'Cabal and Love', whichwas first played at Mannheim on the 15th of April, 1784.[59] The part ofthe lackey who describes the horrors attending the exportation ofsoldiers to America was omitted; the satire was too strong for thepolitic Dalberg, who had all along been troubled by Schiller's drastictreatment of princely iniquity and his obvious allusions to well-knownpersons. Even Schwan, who was delighted with 'Louise Miller' from thefirst and readily undertook to publish it, described its author as anexecutioner. This time the Mannheimers had no difficulty ofcomprehension and they gave their applause unstintingly. After the greatscene in the second act they rose and cheered vociferously,--whereatSchiller bowed and felt very happy. 'His manner', says honest Streicher,who has left a report of the memorable evening, 'his proud and noblebearing, showed that he had satisfied himself and was pleased to see hismerit appreciated.'

A few days later the Mannheim players repeated their triumph atFrankfurt, where Schiller was lionized to his heart's content. 'Cabaland Love' now quickly became a stage favorite. Within a few months itwas played successfully at nearly all the more important theaters ofGermany. Even Stuttgart fell into line, but the Duke of Wuerttemberg wasnot pleased, and a memorial of the nobility led to the prohibition of asecond performance. At Braunschweig It was tried with a happy ending,but this innovation, reasonable as it seems, took no root. A badlygarbled English translation by Timaeus appeared in 1795; a better one byMonk Lewis, under the title of 'The Minister', in 1797. A Frenchtranslation by La Martelliere was hissed off the stage of the TheatreFrancais in 1801.

From the Minerva press the new play got blame and praise. One writer sawin it the same Schiller who was already known as the 'painter ofterrible scenes and the creator of Shaksperian thoughts'. A Berlincritic named Moritz, of whom we shall hear later, called the piece adisgrace to the age and wondered how a man could write and print suchnonsense. The plot consisted, he declared, of a simpleton's quarrel withProvidence over a stupid and affected girl. It was full of crass, ribaldwit and senseless rodomantade. There were a few scenes of whichsomething might have been made, but 'this writer converted everythinginto inflated rubbish'. Some one taxed Moritz with undue severity,whereupon he returned to the attack, insisting that this extravagant,blasphemous and vulgar diction, which purported to be nature rude andstrong, was in reality altogether unnatural.[60]

And, to be candid, the critic was able to bring together an anthology ofquotations which seemed like a rather forcible indictment of Schiller'sliterary taste. What Moritz failed to see was that the bad taste wasonly an excrescence growing upon a very vigorous stock. This was felt byanother reviewer who declared that high poetic genius shone forth fromevery scene of Schiller's works. Many years later Zelter, the friend ofGoethe, bore witness to the electric effect of the play upon himself andthe other excitable youth who saw it in the first days of itspopularity. Like 'The Robbers,' it was a harbinger of the revolution. Itseemed to voice the hitherto voiceless woe of the third estate; and justbecause of that savage force which made it seem absurd to sedate minds,just because it rang out in such shrill and clangorous notes, it hascontinued to be heard. Good taste is a matter of fashion. It is neverthe most vital quality of literature.

If any one should be tempted to think that Schiller's youthful ideals ofthe dramatic art were not sufficiently exalted, he should read thelecture given before the Mannheim German Society, in June, 1784, on thequestion: 'What can a good permanent theater really effect?' It is anexcellent, thoughtful essay, instinct with lofty idealism and at thesame time full of sound observation. Setting out from the postulate thatthe highest aim of all institutions whatsoever is the furtherance of thegeneral happiness, the paper discusses the theater as a publicinstitution of the state. Its claims are examined, and the sphere andmanner of its influence discussed, along with those of religion and thelaws. Probably too much is made out of the moral and educational utilityof the stage,--so at least it will be apt to seem to an American or anEnglishman,--but the familiar arguments, the validity of which is nowgenerally recognized in Germany, are marshalled with a fine breadth ofview and with many felicities of expression. Toward the end there is apassage which shows that Schiller himself felt the shakiness of theutilitarian argument. He says: 'What I have tried to provehitherto--that the stage exerts an essential influence upon morals andenlightenment--was doubtful'; and then he goes on to speak of a valuenot doubtful, namely, its value as a means of refined pleasure. This isthe heart of the matter forever and ever; and one could hardly sum upthe case more sagely than Schiller does in the sentence: 'The stage isthe institution in which pleasure combines with instruction, rest withmental effort, diversion with culture; where no power of the soul is putunder tension to the detriment of any other, and no pleasure is enjoyedto the damage of the community,'

The experience of Schiller at Mannheim illustrates the higher uses ofadversity. Had he been well and happy, he might have written his thirdplay, won the good will of Dalberg and then stuck fast for years in thePalatinate; which would have been a misfortune for him and for Germanletters. As it was, Mannheim gradually became odious to him. He had nobuoyancy of spirit. 'God knows I have not been happy here', he wrote toReinwald in May, 1784. His life was full of petty worries anddistractions which weighted his imagination as with lead. As his yeardrew to an end he imagined that he had but to say the word to have hiscontract with the Mannheim theater renewed, but it was not so; Dalberghad quietly decided to get rid of him. From _his_ point of view his poethad been a bad investment. Schiller had not kept his contract in thematter of the new play; he had done nothing but procrastinate and makeexcuses. 'Don Carlos' had not even been begun. There seemed to be noexcuse for such dawdling, when a man like Iffland could always be reliedupon to turn out a fairly acceptable play in a few weeks. No greatwonder, therefore, that Dalberg lost faith in Schiller and concludedthat he had exhausted his vein. Through a friend he suggested a returnto medicine.

Curiously enough Schiller grasped at the idea, professing that a medicalcareer was the one thing nearest his heart. He had long feared, so hewrote, that his inspiration would forsake him if he relied uponliterature for his living; but if he could devote himself to it in theintervals of medical practice, good things might be hoped for. Heaccordingly proposed a renewal of the contract for another year, withthe understanding that he devote himself principally to his medicalstudies to the end of qualifying for the doctor's degree; in the meantime he would undertake to produce one 'great play' and also to edit adramatic journal. To this amazing proposal Dalberg paid no attention;and when the 1st of September arrived Schiller's connection with theMannheim theater came to an end.

It was a troublous, harassing time for him, that summer of 1784, and themore since the woes of the distracted lover were added to those of thedisappointed playwright and the impecunious debtor. A German savantobserves that Schiller was not, like Goethe, a virtuoso in love. And soit certainly looks, albeit the difference might perhaps appear a littleless conspicuous if he had lived to a ripe old age and dressed up hisrecollections of youth in an autobiographical romance. He did not lackthe data of experience, but without the charm of the retrospectivepoetic treatment his early love-affairs are not profoundly interesting.In the midst of his troubles it came over him that marriage might be theright thing for him; and so, one day in June, 1784, he offered himselfto Frau von Wolzogen for a son-in-law. Nothing came of the suggestion;it was only a passing tribute to the abstract goodness of matrimony.About a year later he made, with similar results, an argumentative bidfor the hand of Margarete Schwan. On the aforementioned visit toFrankfurt he met Sophie Albrecht, a melancholy poetess who had soughtrelief from the tameness of her married life by going upon the stage. Ofher he wrote shortly afterwards:

In the very first hours a firm and warm attachment sprang up between us; our souls understood each other. I am glad and proud that she loves me and that acquaintance with me may perhaps make her happy. A heart fashioned altogether for sympathy, far above the pettiness of ordinary social circles, full of noble, pure feeling for truth and virtue, and admirable even where her sex is not usually so. I promise myself divine days in her immediate society.[61]

But all these palpitations were as water unto wine in comparison withhis unwholesome passion for Charlotte von Kalb, whom he also met firstin the spring of 1784. This lady, after a lonely and loveless girlhood,in which she had been tossed about as an unwelcome incumbrance from onerelation to another, had lately married a Baron von Kalb. Her heart hadno part in the marriage, which was arranged by her guardian. In thepursuit of his career her husband left her much to herself. She was anintrospective creature, very changeable in her moods and passionatelyfond of music and poetry. In Schiller she found her affinity. He actedfirst as her guide about Mannheim, then as her mentor in matters ofliterature. They saw much of each other; became intimately confidentialand soon were treading a dangerous path,--though not so dangerous,peradventure, as has sometimes been inferred from the two poems,'Radicalism of Passion' and 'Resignation', which belong to this period.

In the first of these poems our old friend, the lover of Laura, who issupposed to have married another man in the year 1782, resolves to fightno longer the 'giant-battle of duty'. He apostrophizes Virtue and bidsher take back the oath that she has extorted from him in a moment ofweakness. He will no longer respect the scruples that restrained himwhen the pitying Laura was ready to give all. Her marriage vow wasitself sinful, and the god of Virtue is a detestable tyrant. In theother poem, which is a sort of antidote to the first, we hear of a poet,born in Arcadia, who surrendered his claim to earthly bliss on thepromise of a reward in heaven. He gave up his all, even his Laura, toVirtue, though mockers called him a fool for believing in gods andimmortality. At last he appears before the heavenly throne to claim hisguerdon, but is told by an invisible genius that two flowers bloom forhumanity,--Hope and Enjoyment. Who has the one must renounce the other.The high Faith that sustained him on earth was his sufficient reward andthe fulfillment of Eternity's pledge.

When these poems were published, in 1786, their author saw fit tocaution the public in a foot-note not to mistake an ebullition ofpassion for a system of philosophy, or the despair of an imaginary loverfor the poet's confession of faith. Thus warned one should not be toocurious about the reality which is half revealed and half concealed bythe verses. Enough that it was not altogether a calm, Platonicsentiment, and that the torment of it was a factor in that uneasinesswhich finally became a burning desire to escape from Mannheim. And thefates were preparing a way.

One day in June, when all was looking dark, Schiller received a packetcontaining an epistolary greeting, an embroidered letter-case and fourportrait sketches. The letter was anonymous, but he presently discoveredthat it came from Gottfried Koerner, a young privat-docent in Leipzig,who had united with three friends in sending this token of regard to aSuabian poet whom they had found reason to like. Schiller did not answerimmediately and the skies grew darker still. His relations with theMannheim theater were presently strained to the point of disgust by theproduction of a farce in which he was satirized. He was in terriblestraits for money. To have something to do, after he was set adrift byDalberg, he decided to go ahead with his project of a dramatic journal.An attractive prospectus for the _Rhenish Thalia_ was issued, and hebegan to prepare for the first number, which was to contain aninstallment of 'Don Carlos'. The advance subscriptions fell far short ofhis sanguine hopes. In these occupations the time passed until December.Then one day he penned an answer to the Leipzig letter. It was aturning-point in his destiny. A correspondence sprang up which presentlyconvinced him that where these people were, there he must be.

Toward the end of the year there came another glint of good-will fromthe north. The Duke of Weimar happened to be visiting at the neighboringDarmstadt, and through Frau von Kalb Schiller procured an introductionand an invitation to read the beginning of 'Don Carlos'. The result wasthe title of Weimar Councillor. This was very pleasant indeed; for whileit put no florins in his purse, it gave him an honorable status in theGerman world. He had been cast off by a prince of the barbarians to betaken up by _the_ prince of the Greeks! Henceforth he was in a sense thecolleague of Goethe and Wieland. He began to speak of the Duke of Weimaras _his_ duke, and to indulge in day-dreams concerning the little cityof the Muses in Thueringen. For the rest there was an element of fate'samusing irony in the new title, seeing that he had just announcedhimself, in the prospectus of the _Rhenish Thalia_, as a literaryfree-lance who served no prince, but only the public. The announcementcontained a sketch of his life and a confession of his sins,--which helaid at the door of the Stuttgart Academy. 'The Robbers', he declared,had cost him home and country; but now he was free, and his heartswelled at the thought of wearing no other fetter than the verdict ofthe public, and appealing to no other throne than the human soul.

Owing to various delays the first number of the new journal did notappear until the spring of 1785, and by that time Schiller was all readyfor his flight northward. Matters had continued to go badly with him. Onthe 22nd of February he wrote to Korner, 'in a nameless oppression ofthe heart', as follows:

I can stay no longer in Mannheim. For twelve days I have carried the decision about with me like a resolution to leave the world. People, circumstances, earth and sky, are repulsive to me. I have not a soul to fill the void in my heart--not a friend, man or woman; and what might be dear to me is separated from me by conventions and circumstances.... Oh, my soul is athirst for new nourishment, for better people, for friendship, affection and love. I must come to you; must learn, in your immediate society and in intimate relations with you, once more to enjoy my own heart, and to bring my whole being to a livelier buoyancy. My poetic vein is stagnant; my heart has dried up toward my associations here. You must warm it again. With you I shall be doubly, trebly, what I have been hitherto; and more than all that, my dearest friends, I shall be happy. I have never been so yet. Weep for me that I must make this confession. I have not been happy; for fame and admiration and all the other concomitants of authorship do not weigh as much as one moment of love and friendship. They starve the heart.

To the worldly-wise such a perfervid sight-draft upon the bank of love,made after a few weeks of epistolary acquaintance, will no doubt seem alittle risky. One is reminded of Goethe's Tasso, impulsively offeringhis friendship to a cooler man and getting the reply:

But this time Schiller's instinct had guided him aright. Koerner was noAntonio, and he did not recoil even when he learned that his new friendwas very much in need of money and would not be able to leave Mannheim,unless a Leipzig publisher could be found who would take over hismagazine and advance a few pounds upon its uncertain prospects. This waseasily arranged, for Korner was well-to-do and had himself latelyacquired an interest in the publishing business of Goeschen at Leipzig.Goeschen took the _Thalia_ (dropping the 'Rhenish'), Schiller paid hismore pressing debts, and early in April was on his way to Leipzig,panting for the new friends as the hart panteth after the water-brooks.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 57:

A talent forms itself in solitude, A character in the flowing tide of life.--_Goethes 'Tasso'.]

[Footnote 58: Letter of May 5, 1784.]

[Footnote 59: But this performance was not the first in order of time.'Cabal and Love' had already been played on the 13th of April byGrossmann's company at Frankfurt. Grossmann was an intelligenttheatrical man, who had conceived a liking for Schiller; only he wishedthat the 'dear fiery man' would be a little more considerate of stagelimitations.]

Gottfried Koerner, father of the more famous Theodor, was some threeyears older than Schiller and belonged to an opulent and distinguishedfamily. His father was a high church dignitary, his mother the daughterof a well-to-do Leipzig merchant. The boy had grown up under austerereligious influences and then drifted far in the direction ofliberalism. After a university career devoted at first to the humanitiesand then to law, he had travelled extensively in foreign countries, andthen returned to Leipzig, full of ambition but undecided as to hisfuture course. Here, in 1778, he became acquainted with Minna Stock, thedaughter of an engraver who had once been the teacher of Goethe. Stockdied in 1773, leaving a widow and two daughters to battle with poverty.The elder daughter, Dora, inherited something of her father's vivacioushumor and artistic talent, while the younger and handsomer, Minna, wasof a more domestic temper. When Koerner fell in love with the amiableMinna and wished to marry her, he met with opposition in his own family,who thought that the 'engraver's mamsell' was not good enough for him.This little touch of adversity converted him from a gentleman of leisureand a browsing philosopher into a man with a purpose in life. He setabout making himself independent of the family wealth. To this end heoffered himself as a privat-docent in law at the Leipzig university.When this expedient failed him through lack of students, he began topractice and soon received an appointment which took him to Dresden.This in 1783. Dresden now became his official residence, but he madefrequent visits to his betrothed in Leipzig, and during one of these hismemorable letter to Schiller was indited.

The other member of the quartette was Ludwig Huber, at that time theaccepted lover of Dora Stock. Huber was three years younger thanSchiller,--an impressionable youth, of some linguistic talent, who hadhis occasional promptings of literary ambition. But his soarings weremere grasshopper flights; steady effort was not his affair and he lackedsolid ability. A doting mother had watched and coddled him until inpractical affairs he was comically helpless. As the futility of hischaracter became more apparent with the lapse of time, he lost theesteem of his friends, and the engagement with Dora Stock was brokenoff. So far as Schiller is concerned, the friendship of Huber was apassing episode of no particular importance.

Early in the year 1785 Koerner lost both his parents and found himselfthe possessor of a considerable fortune. There was now no furtherobstacle to his marriage; so the time was fixed for the wedding and heset about preparing a home for his bride. Thus it came about that whenSchiller arrived in Leipzig, on the 17th of April, 1785,--mud, snow andinundations had made the journey desperately tedious,--he did not atonce meet the man whom he most cared to know. Huber and the two ladies,who seem to have expected a wild, dishevelled genius, were astonished tosee a mild-eyed, bashful man, who bore little resemblance to Karl Moorand needed time to thaw up. But the stranger soon felt at home. He hadexplained to Huber minutely how he wished to live. He would no longerkeep his own establishment,--he could manage an entire dramaticconspiracy more easily than his own housekeeping. At the same time hedid not wish to live alone.

I need for my inward happiness [he wrote] a right, true friend who is always at hand like my angel; to whom I can communicate my budding ideas and emotions in the moment of their birth, without writing letters or making visits. Even the trivial circumstance that my friend lives outside my four walls; that I must go through the street to reach him, that I must change my dress, or the like, kills the enjoyment of the moment. My train of thought is liable to be rent in pieces before I can get to him.... I cannot live parterre, nor in the attic, and I should not like to look out upon a churchyard. I love men and the thronging crowd. If I cannot arrange it so that we (I mean the five-parted clover-leaf) may eat together, then I might resort to the table d'hote of an inn, for I had rather fast than not dine in company.[64]

It is clear that, notwithstanding experiences which might haveembittered a less genial nature, Schiller was in no danger of becoming amisanthrope. For him the throng upon the street was not the maddingcrowd of the English poet, nor the 'cursed race' of Frederick the Great,but an inspiration; a spectacle to keep the heart warm and foster thesense of brotherhood. He felt the need of men, however shabbily theymight treat him. And men enough were at hand; for the Leipzig fair wasthen on, and the town was full of strangers who were eager to gape atthe author of 'The Robbers', to be introduced to him, to invite him hereand there. So for a week he floated with the current of casualdissipation and then, caught for an hour by a refluent eddy oflonesomeness,--four parts of the pentamerous clover-leaf were pairedlovers,--he penned a missive which might have changed much in his futurecareer: He sent to Christian Schwan a formal proposal for the hand ofMargarete. With characteristic optimism he urged that fortune had atlast turned favorably. He had good prospects. He proposed to work hardupon 'Don Carlos' and the _Thalia_, and meanwhile quietly to return tomedicine. Wherefore he now made bold to express a hope that he had longcherished but had not dared to utter.

The sequelae of this wooing have never been cleared up in detail.Schiller's letter as preserved bears a marginal note by Schwan to theeffect that Laura in the poem 'Resignation' was no other than his eldestdaughter. 'I gave her this letter to read', the note says, 'and toldSchiller to apply directly to her. Why nothing came of the affair hasremained a riddle to me. Happy my daughter would not have been withSchiller.' The annotation is not dated. The identification of Laura withMargarete is obviously wrong. Was Schwan's memory also at fault? Did heimagine, long after the fact, that he had actually taken what must haveseemed to him, when Schiller had become a famous poet, the reasonablecourse to have pursued? Did he withhold the letter too long and thenshow it? Or was Margarete herself disinclined,--piqued perhaps bySchiller's neglect of her, or by his passion for Charlotte von Kalb? Ordid Schiller's own courage fail him after he had received a hint offavor? A letter to Koerner, written May 7, tells of pleasant news fromMannheim, and shortly afterward a rumor was in circulation that Schillerwas about to marry a rich wife. The probability is that neither partywas more than half inclined to the match. The blue flame perishednaturally for lack of fuel.

Early in May, following the custom of well-to-do Leipzigers, Schillersought refuge from the incipient summer heat of the city by takingrooms in the suburban village (such it was then) of Gohlis. Here, in alittle second-story chamber, which was provided with an infinitesimalbed-room, he lived some four months,--happy months, in the main, evenIf the famous 'Song to Joy', which local tradition ascribes to thistime and place, was in fact written a little later in Dresden. Variousfriends were at hand. Besides Huber there was Goeschen, with whom he wassoon on terms of intimacy. The Stock sisters,--'our dear girls', as hecalls them in a letter to the absent Korner,--had likewise quarteredthemselves in Gohlis; and so had Dr. Albrecht and his wife, Sophie, theactress. These with one or two others were enough for converse and forjollity; and there were merry evenings, with wine and talk, and cardsand skittles and nonsense. Though ordinarily he 'joked wi' difficulty',Schiller could be jovial enough in a company of congenial spirits.Nevertheless there was but little of the bohemian about him. Thatdignified seriousness which pervades all his later writings, and gaveto Goethe the impression of a man dwelling habitually above the planeof vulgar things, was beginning even now to characterize him as asocial being.

While living at Gohlis he received a visit from Moritz, the man who hadwritten so savagely of 'Cabal and Love'. If ever an author has beenjustified in giving the cut direct to a pestilent reviewer, this was theoccasion. But Schiller received his visitor with suave courtesy; aninterchange of views followed and the two men parted with embraces andprotestations of friendly esteem. Schiller was not a good hater, exceptof hate. His nature craved love and friendship. He was eager to learn ofhis critics and could not long cherish resentment over an honestexpression of opinion. Besides this he had now come to feel that hisearly writings were anything but invulnerable.

Notwithstanding his promise of steady industry, Schiller accomplishedbut little during his sojourn at Gohlis. It was the old story: Therewere too many distractions, too many confusing images of what might bedone. The scheme of an antidote to 'The Robbers', in the shape of amoral sequel, gradually dropped out of view, along with the medicalstudies. The _Thalia_, originally planned with reference to the publicat Mannheim, refused to bear transplanting to another soil without aseason of wilting. Instead of manuscript for the second number, Goeschenwas obliged to content himself for several months with excuses forpostponement. And as for 'Don Carlos', the conception had so changedwith the lapse of time that its author felt at a loss how to manage It.The play, with its wonderful pair of dreamers, was waiting for theinspiration of a real friendship at Dresden.

Long before they met in the body Schiller and Koerner had givenexpression to their mutual trust in language of romantic enthusiasm. Onthe 2nd of May Koerner wrote at length of his own life, character andaspirations. The letter reveals a noble nature conscious of anexceptional indebtedness to fortune and eager to pay the debt by solidwork for mankind, but lacking the ability to decide and execute. Koernerevidently felt that he was in some danger of becoming an intellectualSybarite, and he hoped that Schiller's example would save him from thisdanger by spurring him to literary effort. In his reply Schillerexpresses his admiration of a character to whom fortune's favor meansnot, as for most men, the opportunity of enjoyment, but the duty of morestrenuous living; then he sends a jubilant Godspeed to the 'dearwanderer who wishes to accompany him in such faithful, brotherly fashionon his romantic journey to truth, fame and happiness.' The lettercontinues:

I now feel realized in us what as poet I but prophetically imagined. Brotherhood of spirits is the most infallible key to wisdom. Separately we can do nothing.... Do not fear from this time forth for the endless duration of our friendship. Its materials are the fundamental impulses of the human soul. Its territory is eternity; its _non plus ultra_ the Godhead.

Then, as if momentarily abashed by his own extravagance of expression,he protests that his _Schwaermerei_, if such it be, is nothing but a'joyful paroxysm anticipating our future greatness'. For his part, hewould not 'exchange one such moment for the highest triumph of coldreason'. Enthusiasm, he declares, is the greatest thing in life.

The two men did not see each other until July, when a meeting wasarranged at an interjacent village, to which Schiller rode out with theLeipzig friends. The next day he wrote a letter to Koerner, who hadreturned to Dresden, describing an incident of the return journey,--aletter so full of instruction with regard to the Schiller of this periodthat it deserves to be quoted at some length:

Somehow we came to speak of plans for the future. My heart grew warm. It was not idle dreaming. I had a solid philosophic assurance of that which I saw lying before me in the glorious perspective of time. In a melting mood of shame, such as does not depress but rouses to manly effort, I looked back into the past, which I had misused through the most unfortunate waste of energy. I felt that nature had endowed me with powers on a bold plan, and that her intention with me (perhaps a great intention) had so far been defeated. Half of this failure was due to the insane method of my education, and the adverse humor of fate; the other and larger half, however, to myself. Deeply, my best of friends, did I feel all that, and in the general fiery ferment of my emotions, head and heart united in a Herculean vow to make good the past and begin anew the noble race to the highest goal. My feeling became eloquent and imparted itself to the others with electric power. O how beautiful, how divine, is the contact of two souls that meet on the way to divinity! Thus far not a syllable had been spoken of you, but I read your name in Huber's eyes and involuntarily it came to my lips. Our eyes met and our holy purpose fused with our holy friendship. It was a mute hand-clasp--to remain faithful to the resolution of this moment; to spur each other on to the goal, to admonish and encourage, and not to halt save at the bourne where human greatness ends.... Our conversation had taken this turn when we got out for breakfast. We found wine in the inn, and your health was drunk. We looked at each other silently; our mood was that of solemn worship and each one of us had tears in his eyes, which he tried to keep back.... I thought of the beginning of the eucharist: 'Do this as often as ye drink in memory of me.' I heard the organ and stood before the altar. Suddenly I remembered that, it was your birthday. Unwittingly we had celebrated it with a holy rite. Dearest friend, had you seen your glorification in our faces, heard it in our tear-choked voices, at that moment you would have forgotten even your betrothed; you would have envied no happy mortal under the sun. Heaven has strangely brought us together, but in our friendship it shall have wrought a miracle. Dim foreboding led me to expect much, very much of you, when I first decided to come to Leipzig; but Providence has more than fulfilled the promise, and has vouchsafed to me in your arms a happiness of which I could not form an image.

It tends to provoke a smile to read on in this letter and find Itsuddenly turning from such ecstasies to a straightforward confessionthat the writer is embarrassed for lack of ready cash. He had met withdisappointments. The Mannheim people had not treated him handsomely, thesubscribers to the _Thalia_ were delinquent, and so forth. Could notGoeschen be persuaded to undertake a new and authentic edition of thepublished plays and to advance a sum of money on the prospects? Koerner'sreply was prompt and characteristic. He enclosed a draft for currentexpenses, promised more against the time of need and bade his friendhave no further solicitude about money. He knew very well, so he averredwith politic delicacy, that Schiller could easily earn enough by workingfor money; but for a year at least he was to let himself be relieved ofthat degrading necessity. They would keep an account and all should bepaid back with interest in the time of abundance; but for the present nomore of pecuniary anxieties! Schiller, to whose brief experience in aselfish world this sort of conduct was something new, replied that hewould not entrench himself in a false pride, as the great Rousseau haddone on a similar occasion, but would accept the generous offer; thisbeing the best possible expression of his gratitude. Korner was pleasedto have the business settled by letter. 'I have always despised money',he wrote, 'to a degree that it disgusts me to talk about it with soulsthat are dear to me. I attach no importance to actions that are naturalto people of our sort, and which you would perform for me were theconditions reversed.'

It was now arranged that after Koerner's marriage Schiller should makehis home in Dresden. The eagerly awaited migration took place inSeptember, and Schiller entered the Saxon capital, which was to be hishome for the next two years, in a flutter of joyous anticipation. TheKoerners quartered him in their charming suburban cottage at Loschwitz,in the loveliest region he had known since his childhood. The guest, whohad seen but little of the quiet joys of domestic life and was nowreceived on the footing of an adopted brother, felt very happy. Hisintercourse with Koerner gave him the very kind of intellectual stimulusthat he most needed. Koerner was at this time the more solid character ofthe two. He had seen more of the world. While capable of warm affectionand strong enthusiasm, he had adopted, a profession which inevitablygave to his thoughts a practical bent. Besides this he had taken up thestudy of Kant with great earnestness and was thereby more than everdisposed to see all questions in the white light of pure reason. He wasthus the very man to pour a cool Mephistophelean spray upon Schiller'semotional fervors. One can easily imagine the general drift of thephilosophical discussions that took place during the lengtheningevenings of September, 1785, when we find Schiller expressing himself tothe absent Huber in such language as this:

The boyhood of our minds is now over, I imagine, and likewise the honeymoon of our friendship. Let our hearts now cleave to each other in manly affection, gush little and feel much; plan little and act the more fruitfully. Enthusiasm and ideals have sunk incredibly in my estimation. As a rule we make the mistake of estimating the future from a momentary feeling of enhanced power, and painting things in the color of our transient exaltation of feeling. I praise enthusiasm, and love the divine ethereal power of kindling to a great resolution. It pertains to the better man, but it is not all of him.

But life at Loschwitz was not lived altogether in the upper altitudes ofsolemn philosophy. From this period dates the well-known'Petition',--one of the few glints of playful humor to be found amongSchiller's poems. He had been left alone one day with 'Don Carlos', andhe found his meditations disturbed by the operations of the washerwoman.The result was a string of humorous stanzas bewailing the fate of a poetwho is compelled by his vocation to fix his mind upon the love ecstasiesof Princess Eboli, and listen at the same time to the swashy music ofthe wash-tub:

Vanished the dream--the faery chimes-- My Princess, pax vobiscum! The devil take these wash-day rimes, I will no longer risk 'em.

When the Koerners occupied their winter residence in the city, Schillerfound rooms hard by, and was presently joined by Huber, who had secureda position in the diplomatic service. The time was now ripe for thatjubilant song, more frequently set to music than any other of Schiller'spoems, wherein we are introduced to a mystic brotherhood, worshiping infiery intoxication at the shrine of the celestial priestess, Joy, whoseother name is Sympathy. A mystic brotherhood; yet not an exclusive one,since the fraternal kiss is--freely offered to every mortal on the roundearth who has found one soul to love. The lines glorify Joy, just as theodes to Laura had previously glorified Love, as a mystic attractionpervading all nature and leading up to God; as that which holds thestars in their course, inspires the searcher after truth, sustains themartyr and gives a pledge of immortality. Wherefore the millions areexhorted to endure patiently for the better world that is coming, when agreat God will reward. Anger and vengeance are to be forgotten, and ourmortal foe forgiven. After these rapturous strophes, culminating in ahealth to the good Spirit above, one is just a little surprised to hearthe singer urge, with unabated ardor, a purely militant ideal oflife,--firm courage in heavy trial, succor to the oppressed, manly pridein the presence of kings, and death to the brood of liars. A finalstrophe, urging grace to the criminal on the scaffold, generalforgiveness of sinners and the abolition of hell, was rejected bySchiller, who later characterized the song as a 'bad poem'. The 'Song toJoy' sprang from noble sentiment and has the genuine lyric afflatus; butits author had not yet emerged from that nebulous youthfulsentimentalism according to which joy, sympathy, love, friendship,virtue, happiness, God, were all very much the same thing. And thethought is a trifle incoherent. If the good Spirit above the stars is topardon everybody, what becomes of the incentive to a militant life? Whyshould one strive and cry and get into a feaze about tyrants and liars?

The 'Song to Joy', with music by Koerner, was published in the secondnumber of the _Thalia_, which, after hanging fire for months, finallyappeared in February, 1786. It contained also the poems 'Radicalism ofPassion' and 'Resignation', and a fresh installment of 'Don Carlos'. Ofthe prose contributions the most important was the story, 'The Criminalfrom Disgrace', later called 'The Criminal from Lost Honor'. It wasbased upon a true story, got from Professor Abel in Stuttgart,concerning the life and death of a notorious Suabian robber, namedSchwan, who was put to death in 1760. Schiller changed the name toChristian Wolf and built out of the ugly facts a strumous tale ofcriminal psychology,--the autopsy of a depraved soul, as he called it.His hero is a sort of vulgarized Karl Moor; that is, an enemy of societywho might have been its friend if things had not happened so and so. Thesuccessive steps of his descent from mild resentment to malignant fury,libertinism and crime, and the reaction of his own increasing depravityupon his own mind, are described in a manner which is fairly interestingfrom a literary point of view, whatever a modern expert criminologistmight think of it. The _crux_ of the ever difficult problem,--theprecise division of responsibility between society and the wretch whomit spews out of its mouth,--is brought clearly into view, but withoutany attempt at an exact solution. The tale is not a homily, but anobject-lesson designed to show how things go. It is too slight an affairto be worthy of extended comment, but it shows Schiller becominginterested in the psychological analysis of conduct. Moral goodness andbadness are beginning to appear less simple concepts, and the tangle ofhuman motive more intricate, than he had supposed.

Along with these contributions there also appeared in the second numberof the _Thalia_ a translation of the 'Precis Historique', prefixed byMercier to his recently published 'Portrait de Philippe Second'. The'portrait' itself was a dramatic picture, in fifty-two scenes, withoutdivision into acts. The work of Mercier, who paints the Spanish king inthe darkest possible colors, furnished a few hints for 'Don Carlos', butits influence was not very great. What chiefly concerns us here is tonote Schiller's awakening interest in historical studies. In the springof 1786, during an absence of the Koerners which deprived him of hiswonted inspiration, he found himself unable to work. Letter after lettertells of laziness and mental vacuity. As he could do nothing else hetook to desultory reading, and this did not satisfy him. 'Really', hewrote on the 15th of April:

Really I must turn over a new leaf with my reading. I feel with pain, that I still have such an astonishing amount to learn; that I must sow In order to reap.... History is becoming dearer to me every day. I have this week read a history of the Thirty Years' War, and my head is still quite feverish from it. That this epoch of the greatest national misery should have been at the same time the most brilliant epoch of human power! What a number of great men came forth from this night! I could wish that for the ten years past I had done nothing but study history. I believe I should have become a very different fellow. Do you think I shall yet be able to make up for lost time?

One sees from this language by what particular hook the study of historyhad taken hold of Schiller's mind, and what kind of profit he waspromising himself from further reading. He was interested in theevolution of great men. For him, as for the poets always, from Homerdown, history resolved itself into the doings of the leaders.

For the time being, however, the new zeal seems to have been a mereflash in the pan, that set nothing in motion. Nor was Koerner able, forsome time to come, to induce his friend to make a serious study ofKant's 'Critique', though every third word between them was ofphilosophy. Nevertheless their philosophic debates did bear literaryfruit. The third number of the _Thalia_, which came out in May,contained the first installment of the 'Philosophical Letters', afictitious correspondence between two friends, Julius and Raphael, whohave arrived by different routes at the same way of thinking, and areresolved to tell the world how it all came about. Julius is Schiller;Raphael is Koerner, who actually contributed one of the later letters. Welearn that Julius was passing through a spiritual crisis. He was happybut he had not reflected. The little world of his rapturous emotionssufficed him. Now, however, Raphael has enlightened his mind, made him acitizen of the world and taught him to comprehend the all-sufficientmajesty of reason; but he has won enlightenment at the expense of peace.He is miserable and demands back his soul. Raphael rebukes him gentlyfor his faint-heartedness and asks for a history of his thinking. SoJulius rummages through his papers and sends on a somewhat elaborate'Theosophy of Julius',--a sort of _precis_, it would seem, of Schiller'searlier views. It is religious mysticism set forth with warm eloquence.The universe is a thought of God. The highest aim of thinking is to readthe divine plan. All spirits are attracted by perfection. The supremeperfection is God, of whom love is an emanation. Love is gain; hate isloss; pardon, the recovery of lost property; misanthropy a prolongedsuicide; egoism the utmost poverty. If every man loved all mankind,every man would possess the world. If we comprehend perfection itbecomes ours. If we plant beauty and joy, beauty and joy shall we reap.If we think clearly we shall love fervently.

To this 'theosophy' Julius adds a few comments, evidently of laterorigin, which show that he has now become aware of its intellectualinadequacy. Still he does not repudiate it. He thinks it may do for adoctrine, if one's nature is adapted to it.--Herewith, so far asSchiller was concerned, the 'Philosophic Letters' came to an end; but inthe spring of 1788, Koerner surprised him with a letter by Raphael, whichis, philosophically speaking, by far the best of the entire collection.But this book is not concerned with the writings of Koerner.

Ere the third number of the _Thalia_ appeared it had become evident thatthe enterprise would not be profitable, and its perplexed editor was indoubt whether to continue it. He finally decided to go on. When thefourth number came out, early in 1787, it contained the beginning of anovel, 'The Ghostseer', wherein a mysterious Sicilian, and a still moremysterious Armenian, dog the footsteps of a German Prince von ----living at Venice, and do various things suggesting a connectionwith occult powers. The first installment of the story broke off at avery exciting point,--just when the Sicilian has produced his amazingghost-scene, but has not yet been unmasked as a vulgar fraud. Schillerevidently began the novel in no very strenuous frame of mind. Hewished to profit by the popular interest in tales of mysteriouscharlatanry which had been aroused by the exploits of Cagliostro. Sohe set out to spin a yarn in that vein, but he had no definite planand did not himself know where he would bring up. The literary meritsof 'The Ghostseer', Schiller's most noteworthy attempt in prosefiction, will come up for consideration in connection with theconclusion, or rather the continuation, which he published some twoyears later, when he had left Dresden to seek his fortune in Weimar.

Even now the necessity of seeking his fortune somewhere was dailybecoming more imperious. The _Thalia_ did not pay, though the criticsspoke well of it, and he could not live forever upon Koerner's friendlyadvances of money. The sense of his dependence often galled him; and yetwhen a proposal, in itself highly attractive, came to him from a distantcity, he could not pluck up courage to leave his friend. FriedrichSchroeder, the greatest German actor of the time, wished to draw him toHamburg. Schiller looked up to Schroeder with genuine admiration andspeculatively promised himself great gain from association with 'the oneman in Germany who could realize all his ideas of art.' In Mannheim,--sohe wrote in October, 1786,--he had lost all his enthusiasm for thetheater; it was now beginning to revive, but he shuddered at thetreatment to which playwrights were exposed by theatrical people.Moreover he was living at Dresden 'in the bosom of a family to which hehad become necessary'. So nothing came of the negotiations except thepreparation of a stage version of 'Don Carlos' for the Hamburg theater.

An amusing glimpse of domestic conditions in the Koerner household isafforded by Schiller's dramatic skit, entitled 'Koerner's Forenoon'. Itbelongs apparently to the year 1787, but was not published until 1862.The busy councillor of the Dresden Consistory sees a little leisurebefore him and squares off at his desk for a solid forenoon's work. Hebegins by ordering his man to shave him. Then he is interrupted by aprocession of callers,--Schiller, in various roles, and Minna, andDorchen, and Professor Becker and others--who keep the stream of babbleflowing until one o'clock. Koerner is too late for the consistory and allthat he has accomplished is to get shaved. The piece is a slight affair,but there is enough of solemn fun in it to make one wish that its authorhad seen fit to work his lighter vein more frequently.

About the time when this facetious bagatelle was penned, or a littleearlier perhaps, Schiller became the hero of a comedy in real life. Inthe winter of 1787 he attended a masked ball where he met 'a prettydomino--a plump voluptuous maiden,--who fascinated him. Her name wasHenriette von Arnim. He followed up the acquaintance and was soon quiteseriously interested. As the Arnim family did not enjoy the best ofreputations, the Koerners were annoyed at Schiller's seeming lack ofconnoisseurship in women. They contrived to let him know that on theevenings when Henriette was not at home to him she was at home to acertain earthy Count Waldstein, or to a certain jew banker, as the casemight be. This was painful, but not immediately decisive, and miserabledays ensued. In the spring he was persuaded to try a few weeks' outingin the country. Here he was at first frightfully lonesome,--a dejectedRobinson Crusoe, who could neither work nor amuse himself. To hispathetic demands for reading-matter his friends replied with malicioushumor by sending him Goethe's 'Werther' and Laclos's 'LiaisonsDangereuses'. After a while the Arnims followed him, but presently thecount came also; and then the course of true love, thus awkwardlybifurcated, was more troubled than ever. After Henriette's return toDresden there was an interchange of letters, wherein love fought alosing battle with doubt and suspicion.

This half-year of amatory perturbation was of course unfavorable toliterary labor. No further numbers of the _Thalia_ appeared, and 'TheMisanthrope', a new play of excellent promise, made no progress. But'Don Carlos' did at last get itself completed--after a fashion. It waspublished early in the summer. And now, with this burden lifted, thetime seemed to have arrived for carrying out the long-cherished plan ofa visit to Weimar. Who could tell what might come of it? Koerner was justas loyal as ever, but he was also wise enough to respect his friend'slonging for a more assured and less dependent existence. And so in JulySchiller set out for Thueringen,--to be seen no more in Dresden save asan occasional visitor. But the letters he wrote to the noble-mindedfriend who had done and been so much for him constitute, for severalyears to come, our best source of information concerning his outwardfortune and his inner history. Before we follow him to Weimar, however,it will be in order to consider the play which remains as the mostimportant achievement of his Dresden period.

With the publication of 'Don Carlos' Schiller's literary reputationentered upon a new phase. Hitherto he had been known as a playwright inwhom the passion for strong effects often obscured the sense of artisticfitness. Of his dramatic power there could be no doubt, but had he thehigher gift of the great poet? Would he ever be able to clothe hisconceptions in a form that would appeal permanently to the general heartbecause of high and rare artistic excellence? Doubts of this kind werequite justifiable up to the year 1787, but they were set at rest by 'DonCarlos'. However vulnerable it may be as a poetic totality, it haspassages that are magnificent. Its sonorous verse, wedded to a loftyargument and freighted with the noblest idealism of the century, madesure its author's title to a place in the Walhalla of the poets.

Except 'Wallenstein' no other work of Schiller cost him such long andstrenuous toil. 'Don Carlos', like Goethe's 'Faust', is a stratifieddeposit. The time that went to the making of it, only four years in all,was comparatively short, but it was for Schiller a time of rapid change;and the play, intensely subjective from the first, participated in theripening process. The result is a certain lack of artistic congruity.Schiller himself, always his own best critic, felt this and franklyadmitted it in the first of his 'Letters upon Don Carlos'.

It may be [he wrote] that in the first [three] acts I have aroused expectations which the last do not fulfill. St. Real's novel, perhaps also my own remarks upon it in the first number of the _Thalia_, may have suggested to the reader a standpoint from which the work can no longer be regarded. During the period of elaboration, which on account of divers interruptions was a pretty long time, much changed within myself.... What had mainly attracted me at first, attracted me less later on, and at last hardly at all. New ideas that came into my mind crowded out the earlier ones. Carlos himself had declined in my favor, for no other reason perhaps than that I had outgrown him, and for the opposite reason the Marquis of Posa had taken his place. So it came about that I brought a very different heart to the fourth and fifth acts. Yet the first three were already in the hands of the public, and the plan of the whole could not be recast; I had either to suppress the piece entirely (for which very few of my readers would have thanked me), or else to fit the second half to the first as best I could.

Let us look somewhat closely at the process of evolution here alluded toin general terms.

The original impulse came from a work of romantic fiction, the 'DomCarlos' of St. Real, which was first read by Schiller in the summer of1782 and drew from him the comment that the story 'deserved the brush ofa dramatist'. St. Real's novel begins by telling how Charles the Fiftharranged, just before his abdication, that his grandson Carlos shouldsome day marry Elizabeth of Valois: and how afterwards Philip determinedto take the French princess for his own wife instead of leaving her tohis son. Meanwhile, however, by much gazing at the picture of hisbetrothed, young Carlos had learned to love her, and she in turn hadconceived for him a 'disposition to love rather than a veritablepassion'. Arrived at the Spanish court the young queen wins all hearts;even the white-haired Philip falls in love with her, though he treatsher with stately reserve in the presence of others and surrounds herwith the restraints of Spanish etiquette. Thus the queen comes to feelthat she possesses 'only the body of her husband, his soul being filledwith the designs of his ambition and the meditation of his policy'. Asfor Carlos, his love-lorn eyes soon betray to her how it is with him,but she can only pity him, though she secretly returns his love, for sheis as virtuous as she is beautiful.

Not so the Princess Eboli, wife of Ruy Gomez, the tutor of Carlos.Having tried to win the love of the king and found her designs thwartedby the queen's beauty, Eboli makes advances to Prince Carlos, who letsher know that he cannot love her and thus makes her angry. In this moodshe bestows her favor upon the king's half-brother, Don Juan of Austria,who is also enamored of the queen and has been watching Carlossuspiciously. Having thus made enemies of Eboli and Don Juan, Carlosnext draws upon himself the hatred of the powerful Duke of Alva, of RuyGomez, and of the Inquisition. This he does by his outspoken criticismof their doings and his threats of punishment to be meted out to themwhen he shall have become king. Anxious for their own future Alva andRuy Gomez conspire together and cause suspicions of Carlos to bewhispered in the ear of the king. At first Philip is not greatlyexcited. When Carlos, importuned by Count Egmont, asks for a commissionto the Netherlands, Philip does not refuse, but declares that he will gotoo and share the peril of his son. This, however, is a mere ruse togain time. While they are waiting, the king meanwhile feigning illness,Carlos communicates freely with the queen through his bosom friend, theMarquis of Posa. Hearing of this intimacy the king now becomes reallyjealous, but of Posa not of Carlos. Maddened by suspicion he has themarquis murdered on the street and employs Eboli to watch the queen.After this Carlos resolves upon independent action and begins tonegotiate with the Netherlanders. His operations are watched andreported by his enemies, and just as he is about to leave Spain he isarrested. The king places his case before the Holy Office, which decreesthat he must die. Being allowed to choose the manner of his death heopens his veins while bathing.

With the actual Don Carlos, whose story bears but little resemblance tothat of St. Real's hero, we are not particularly concerned. The FrenchAbbe's drift is to exalt the French princess and to give a tellingpicture of a pair of high-minded lovers who are brought to their deathby a complicate intrigue begotten of jealousy, political hatred andreligious fanaticism. After the death of Carlos the queen is poisonedand then, one after the other, all the conspirators meet with poeticjustice. "Ainsi", the Abbe concludes, "furent expiees les morts a jamaisdeplorables d'un prince magnanime, et de la plus belle et de la plusvertueuse princesse qui fut jamais. C'est ainsi que leurs ombresinfortunees furent enfin pleinement appaisees par les funestes destineesde tous les complices de leur trepas."

St. Real's novel was published in 1672 and has been a favorite quarry ofthe dramatist. Of the plays of Otway (1676) and Campistron (1685)Schiller had no knowledge, nor did he receive any suggestions from thefierce and gloomy 'Filippo' of Alfieri, which appeared in 1783. Heapproached the subject in his own way and his first thought was simplyto dramatize St. Real, who is mainly interested in the love tragedy andwrites as a literary artist rather than as a political or religiouspamphleteer. We possess a prose outline[65] of 'Don Carlos', writtenprobably at Bauerbach, which shows exactly how the theme first bit intoSchiller's mind. The exposition was to show the secret passion of thelovers and the dangers threatening them from the jealousy of Philip, thepolitical hostility of the grandees and the malice of the slightedEboli. In the third act the king would become madly suspicious andresolve upon his son's death. Then there was to be a gleam of hope: theambition of Carlos would awaken and begin to prevail over his love,while Posa would divert the king's suspicion to himself and fall asacrifice to friendship. Then a new danger would arise: the king woulddiscover Don Carlos in a seeming 'rebellion', and decree his death. Thedying declaration of Carlos would prove his innocence and the king wouldbe left alone to mourn the havoc he had wrought and to punish theconspirators who had deceived him.

This sketch promises, it will be observed, not a political tragedy,but, as Schiller himself afterwards phrased it, a 'domestic tragedy ina royal household'. Springing up from the same soil and at the sametime as 'Cabal and Love', it was to be much the same sort of play. Inboth a pair of high-minded lovers belonging together by naturalaffinity, but separated by artificial barriers; the rights of passionbattling in the one case with social prejudice, in the other with thelaw of Rome and the malice of courtiers; in both a court plot againstthe lovers; the hero beset by a fair sinner who receives him in herprivate room, lays siege to him, and is angered by the slighting of herlove; in both a tyrannical and headstrong father at enmity with hisson. Of the political ideas which the world associates with 'DonCarlos' there is here no adumbration. We hear nothing of theNetherlanders, nor of the Inquisition, nor of the rights of man. Posais only a friend of Carlos, not the ambassador of all mankind, andthere is no room for his golden dreams of philanthropic statesmanship.And yet it is worth noticing that in three points (all in the thirdact) Schiller adds to his French source: Carlos's ambition was to wakenand prevail over his love, Posa was to sacrifice himself, and thelovers were to rise superior to their passion.

However, no sooner did our playwright address himself seriously to histask than his imagination began to break over the bounds he had set forit. Even at Bauerbach, as his letters show, his mind was occupied withthe thought of 'avenging mankind' by scourging the gloomy despotism ofPhilip, the monstrous cruelty of Alva, the dark intrigues of the Jesuitsand the hideous crimes of the Inquisition. That he made any progress inthe spring of 1783, further than to cogitate upon his general plan andto fall in love with his hero, is not probable; nor do his Mannheimletters allude to 'Don Carlos' until June, 1784. In a letter of thatdate he assures Dalberg,--mindful of that good man's trials inconnection with 'Cabal and Love',--that the new play will be 'anythingbut a political piece'. Whatever could offend the feelings was to bestrictly avoided. August 24 he writes that 'Don Carlos' is a 'splendid,subject', especially for himself. Four great characters, Carlos, Philip,the queen, and Alva (no mention of Posa) open before him a boundlessfield. He cannot forgive himself for having tried to shine in thebourgeois drama, where another may easily surpass him (this in allusionto Iffland), whereas in historical tragedy he need fear no rival. Headds that he is now fairly master of the iambic form and that the versecannot fail to impart splendor and dignity.

So we see that by the end of his first year in Mannheim Schiller hadindeed undergone a change. The _saeva indignatio_ of the dramaticpamphleteer had given way to the serener mood of the poetic artist. Thischange would doubtless have come about under any circumstances, throughthe natural ripening of his mind and art, but it was hastened by theinfluence of Klein and Wieland, and by the example of Lessing's'Nathan'. Anton von Klein, a Jesuit _bel esprit_ living at Mannheim, wasa steadfast champion of the regular heroic tragedy. He had written asearching review of 'The Robbers', pointing out its many faults andabsurdities, but he recognized Schiller's talent and saw in him a manworth converting. At Mannheim a friendship sprang up between the two,and Schiller heard much talk about the superior merit of the noblepoetic style,--a region of thought in which he had hitherto wandered butlittle. He had written thus far out of the fervor of his soul, andtheory of any sort had touched him but little. From Rousseauiteliterature he had caught a fantastic conception of 'nature', and thishad led him to portray men and women who were scarcely more natural thanthose of Gottsched himself. In the rush of feeling he had enlisted amongthe young revolutionists whose stormy and stressful tendency, curiouslyenough, was regarded as 'English'. And now he found that there was afterall something to be said in favor of the classical French type. The'anglo-maniacs' were not in possession of the whole truth. Might therenot be, perhaps, a _tertium quid_,--a German drama having a character ofits own and combining the literary dignity and artistic finish of theFrench with the warmth and variety of the pseudo-English school? As ifin answer to this query, Lessing's 'Nathan', published in 1779, hadalready opened a vista of limitless possibilities. And 'Nathan' was inblank verse.

To this was added the influence of Wieland, who had lately published aseries of 'Letters to a Young Poet',[66] in which he read hiscontemporaries a lecture on the absurdity of their boasting over theFrench. He wanted to know where the German dramas were that couldcompare with the best works of Racine, Corneille and Moliere. Heinsisted that a perfect drama no less than a perfect epic must be inverse. Even rime in his opinion was indispensable. Such doctrine comingfrom a man of Wieland's immense authority in literary matters could notfail to influence the groping mind of Schiller, though he could notstomach the demand for rime. The blank verse of Shakspere and Lessingseemed to promise best, and so he set about practicing upon it. At firstthe meter gave him great difficulty; he could not subdue his strongpassion and his wild tropes to the even tenor of the decasyllabiccadence. Then followed his decision to publish his play piecemeal in the_Thalia_,--an unfortunate decision as it proved. His hope was to profitbetimes by what his critics might say. He was in a mood of boundlessdocility and boundless confidence in the public. Resolved to write 'noverses that could not be submitted to the best heads in the nation', hefondly imagined that the nation would be as eager to help him as he waseager to be helped. As a matter of fact he got but little assistancefrom the critic tribe, and his piecemeal publication only served toembarrass him when he came to the final redaction of the whole.

In the short preface which introduced the first installment to thepublic, Schiller ventured the opinion that the excellence of his tragedywould depend mainly upon his success in portraying the king. Thesituation of Carlos and the queen was interesting, he thought, but nottragically pathetic; it would be difficult to create sympathy for them.If, however, King Philip was to be the center of tragic interest, it wasevident that he could not be depicted, in accordance with a one-sidedtradition, as a repellent monster. From these and other expressions inthe same essay we can see that Schiller was growing cool toward hishero. He felt that the troubles of Carlos and the queen could not beregarded under the Rousseauite scheme of natural passion battling withodious convention, but that the passion was itself odious. He felt thata young prince, pining and whining and plunging himself into disasterall on account of an illicit and mawkish love for his stepmother, wasnot a very inspiring personage to be the hero of a great historicaldrama. The solution of the problem seemed for the moment to lie in a'rescue' of King Philip. So the love-tragedy in a royal household beganto take on more than ever the character of a political tragedy, thepromise to Dalberg being quickly forgotten. When he began to publish,however, his political program was still rather vague and negative; ithardly went beyond the intention to bestow an incidental scourging uponthe enemies of mankind in church and state.

Then came the influence of Koerner, the effect of which was to givegreat prominence to the character of Posa as a positive champion of theright, and to make him for a while the real hero of the play. Thereseems at first blush but little resemblance between the fanaticalidealist of Schiller's imagination and the sensible Dresden lawyer, butthe Koerner strain in Posa is unmistakable. In his intercourse withSchiller he was evermore insisting on the importance of doing somethingfor mankind. Enthusiasm, love, friendship, sentiment of any kind, werevaluable in his estimation only as sources of inspiration for tellingactivity. As matters of mere private ecstasy, of froth and foam risingand falling to no effect in the turmoil of the individual soul, theywere for him objects of mild derision. And the idea that lay nearesthis heart as a student of Kant was the idea of freedom. And so, asSchiller worked upon his play at Dresden, Posa was made the exponent ofthe new point of view. He became the teacher of the unripe Carlos, evenas Koerner had been the teacher of the unripe Schiller; the subduer ofunmanly emotionalism; the apostle of renunciation; the pointer of theway to great deeds; the prophet of a free humanity to come. In thebrilliant light thus thrown upon Posa the other heroes were somewhatobscured. The poet's original love, Don Carlos, and his second love,Don Philip, had to make way for a third passion that was stronger thaneither of the others.

The four installments of 'Don Carlos' that were printed in the _Thalia_,up to the end of 1786, comprised in all three acts. They carried theaction to the point where the king, lonely amid sycophants anddeceivers, sighs for a 'man' to counsel him. The great scene betweenPosa and Philip was yet to come in Act IV. The matter already in printcontained more than four thousand verses, and several scenes had onlybeen sketched in prose. At this rate it was evident that the play wouldreach twice the length of a regular tragedy and would be animpossibility on the stage. Schiller began to see that his impatience ofstage restrictions and his subjective interest in certain situations haddone him an evil turn. He had been deplorably long-winded. And just thencame out a caustic review which showed him that he had committed othersins than those of prolixity.[67] Nevertheless he did not now haverecourse to that drastic surgery whereby, in the edition of 1801, hereduced the unwieldy play to more manageable dimensions.[68] Without anyradical revision of the part already in print, he completed the last twoacts as best he could, with Minerva often unwilling. Posa was made togain the king's confidence, to become seemingly omnipotent, and in thepride of his imagined strength to enter upon that desperate game ofintrigue and double-dealing which involves himself and his cause and hishelpless friend, Don Carlos, in final disaster.

Thus St. Real's pathetic tale of love and intrigue had been left farbehind, and out of it had come a tragedy of amiable political idealism,growing insolent with self-confidence and losing touch with presentrealities in its dazzling dream of things to come.

'The soul of Shakspere's Hamlet, the blood and nerves of Leisewitz'sJulius, the pulse of Schiller himself',--this, it will be recalled, wasthe original formula for the composition of Prince Carlos. But, alas,the soul of one of Shakspere's heroes is not so easily purloined, andSchiller did not succeed well in his proposed larceny. What we find isnot the soul but the situation of Hamlet: a young prince just returnedfrom the university,--troubled by a strange melancholy,--a mystery toking and court,--beset by spies whom he sends packing,--visited by adear academic friend,--called to a great work to which he feels himselfunequal, and so forth. The parallel is obvious, but it hardly goesbeyond externalities. Nor does the portrait of Carlos owe very much thatis vital to Leisewitz. He gives us, to be sure, a love-sick prince whoseillicit passion unnerves him, and like Carlos Julius has a friend whoadmonishes him to be a man. But there the resemblance ends; he has notthe strength to renounce and remains to the end a sentimental weakling.

The truth is that the soul, pulse, blood and nerves of Carlos are simplySchiller's own. There is no other creation of his into which he put somuch of himself. That feeling of dark despair and dead ambition to whichCarlos gives expression in his first dialogue with Posa is but a poeticecho of actual experiences.

I too have known a Carlos in my dreams Whose cheek flushed crimson when he heard the name Of Freedom. But that Carl is dead and buried,--

sighs the Spanish prince. 'I might perhaps have become great, but fatetook the field against me too early.... Love and esteem me for thatwhich I might have become under more favorable stars',--writes theactual Schiller.[69] And just as Carlos throws himself into the arms ofPosa and thinks to find his all in friendship, so Schiller hopedineffable things from Koerner. Nowhere else in literature has theeighteenth-century cult of friendship found such fervid, and in the mainsuch noble, expression as in 'Don Carlos'.

It may indeed be fairly objected that, in view of what is to come later,the Carlos of the first act is a little too soft even for thesentimental age. We are required to have faith in his heroic capacityfor enterprises of great pith and moment. But after his first dialoguewith Posa it is as difficult for the reader or spectator to trust him asit is for King Philip. His lacrimose raptures over so simple a thing asa youthful friendship; his abject confession of despair and dependence;his long-drawn-out revelation of a sick heart, and his morbid cravingfor sympathy in a passion which he himself feels to be abominable,--allthis suggests a cankered soul of which there can be little hope. Hamletgreets the returning Horatio with the simple words:

Sir, my good friend. I'll change that name with you.

The corresponding passage in Schiller runs:

Can it be? Is't true? Is't possible? 'Tis really thou. I press thee to my heart and feel the beat Of thine omnipotent against my own. Now all is well again.--In this embrace The sickness of my soul is cured. I lie Upon my Roderick's neck.

One does not see how such pitiful weakness is all at once to beconverted into manly strength by the mere arrival of a friend; whereforethat fine saying of Carlos which closes the first act,

Arm in arm with thee, I hurl defiance at my century,

sounds a trifle bombastic.

So again at his first meeting with Elizabeth, Carlos is distressinglymawkish. She pictures him, in pitying indignation, as succeeding to thethrone, undoing his father's work and at last marrying herself. Then heexclaims in sudden horror:

Accursed son! Yes, it is over. Now 'Tis over. Now I see it all so clearly,

and much more of the same purport. But how strange that he should havebrooded for eight moons over his passion without ever having consideredhow it might appear to the object of it! His talk here suggests a mentalinadequacy which one is hardly prepared to see change all of a suddeninto heroic resolution.

To be sure it was a part of Schiller's design to represent in Carlos aprocess of evolution. Under the influence of manly friendship the pulingsentimentalist was to have his fiber toughened into the stuff that greatmen are made of; and so it was quite in order that he should appear atfirst as a weakling. But he is too much of a weakling, and the reason isthat Schiller did not foresee the end from the beginning. He thought ofCarlos originally as a hapless youth having a sort of natural right torebel. It was a part of the plan, moreover, that he should renounce andgrow strong through renunciation. But this was to come later in thethird act; in the beginning he was to dally with the morbid passionwhich was to be his tragic guilt. Now with this conception of thesubject, the portrait of Carlos, just as we have it, fits in very well;but when the main interest of the play had become political, when thelawless love had become of no account and the renunciationeverything,--then it was surely an error to introduce Carlos in such apitiful plight of soul that faith in him is next to impossible, and thenext moment require us to accept him as a hero.

In fine, one may well wish that Carlos had a little more of the soul ofHamlet,--leastwise of Hamlet's rough energy of character and savingsense of humor. But the time is past for thinking to dispose of Schillerby saying that he was no Shakspere. Enough that he was himself. Andnowhere was he more himself than in just this combination of infinitesoft-heartedness with large manly ambition. When Carlos preaches to hisfather that 'tears are the eternal credential of humanity', he utters agenuine oracle of the sentimental age. And when in the final scene heappears purified by suffering, master of his selfish passion and allintent upon that higher good of which he has caught a glimpse, he speaksagain from the heart of Schiller. What a noble figure is Carlos in thislast interview with his mother! What matchless poetry in the lines! Andhow genuinely, thrillingly tragic is the ending of the scene!

The teacher of Prince Carlos is the amazing Marquis of Posa. In acynical foot-note of the year 1845 Carlyle quotes, with seemingapproval, Richter's comparison of Posa to the tower of alight-house,--"high, far-shining, empty". But what would Jean Paul havehad? Is it not quite enough for a light-house to be high andfar-shining? One does not see how its usefulness would be enhanced byfilling it with the beans and bacon of practical politics. Here surelyone must side with Schiller and never think of criticising him for notmaking his Posa an exponent of political ideas that belong to a latertime. Every age has its dream. Ours is of a people to be made happy bydemocratic legislation; Schiller's was of a people to be made happy bythe personal goodness and enlightenment of the monarch. That the onedream, seen _sub specie aeternitatis_, is any more empty and fatuousthan the other, would be very difficult to prove.

The sentimental imagination of the eighteenth century was fond ofdwelling upon the loneliness of the princely station. Standing above allother men, occupied habitually with weighty matters of state, surroundedby self-seeking flatterers and schemers, how was a ruler ever to hearthe truth or to know the blessedness of disinterested friendship? Awfulfate to be thus cut off from tender human affection and compelled totread the wine-press alone! And if a prince should really find a friend,how fortunate for him and his subjects! It was the simple theory ofidealists under the Old Regime that the happiness of a people dependedaltogether upon the wisdom and goodness of the king; and in an age when'feeling was everything' it was natural that goodness of the heartshould count for more than mere sagacity. What the king was believed toneed pre-eminently, was to keep alive his human sympathies; and howcould he do this better than by having some one to love and confide in?

So Schiller provides his Spanish prince with a friend. Our drama seemsto wish to impute to Posa a lovable personality; else how account forthe spell that he casts over all three of the royal personages?[70]Looked at closely, however, and judged by his conduct rather than by hisfine phrases, he appears anything but lovable. After his death it comesto light that he is deeply involved in a conspiracy for which theordinary name is treason. He has been organizing a combination ofEuropean powers for the purpose of detaching the Netherlands by forcefrom the Spanish crown. He returns to Spain as an arch-traitor,--withhis pockets full of letters which if discovered would cost him his head.When one learns this and then thinks back in the light of thisknowledge, his conduct throughout the play appears absolutelyinconceivable; so that one is driven to the conjecture that Schiller didnot think of him all along as an out-and-out traitor, but added thistouch at the last, along with others, for the purpose of accenting hischaracter as a Quixotic madman.

Up to the fourth act the impression produced by him is that of anamiable idealist, who has travelled extensively and acquired liberalideas of government. He has been shocked by the regime of persecutionand bloodshed in the Netherlands. He cares nothing for Protestantism asa creed, but he is an apostle of tolerance in the style of Frederick theGreat. He returns to Spain intent upon securing for the Netherlands notpolitical independence through revolution, but freedom of thought underthe Spanish crown; and this he thinks to accomplish by procuring thestadholdership for Prince Carlos. Now this being the presupposition, itwas a great thought of Schiller to bring his humane dreamer face to facewith the somber despot, Philip the Second, Let it be granted that Posa'sviews of statesmanship, which belong to the Age of Enlightenment, couldhardly have found lodgment in the brain of a chevalier of the 16thcentury. The thing is perhaps supposable only in poetry; but there it issupposable enough, and Schiller need not have troubled himself to argueaway the anachronism. It is the poet's prerogative to mask himself andhis own age in the forms of the fictitious past. He will do it anyway,no matter how hard he may strive after historical verisimilitude. It isjust as well, therefore, for him to throw away his scruples and standboldly on his rights.

From a dramaturgic point of view, indeed, the long political altercationbetween Posa and Philip is out of place; it is magnificent, but it holdsup the action to no purpose, and the play goes on as if it had not been.Schiller was evidently concerned to produce a pendant to the great scenein 'Nathan the Wise'. Saladin wants truth, Philip wants a man. Both theprophets prepare themselves for their ordeal in a brief soliloquy. Bothmonarchs get their wish, and a friendly relation ensues. Both scenes arepurple patches of didacticism,--the author preaching a sermon to hiscontemporaries. Unfortunately Schiller did not have at hand a matchlessfable to make his doctrine concrete and give it human interest. Inplaces his language is abstract and difficult to follow, but taken as awhole the scene is admirable in its denotation of Posa's manlyindependence and humane philosophy. For a moment the marquis dreams ofaccomplishing his purpose by an appeal to the goodness and enlightenmentof the king; and into his appeal he pours all the eloquence ofeighteenth-century humanitarianism. All that the literature ofgenerations had garnered up; all that lay on the heart of the youngSchiller, in the way of fair hopes for mankind to be realized by humaneand enlightened rulership, finds here immortal expression through themouth of Posa.

And then what a revulsion in the last two acts! The great scene of thethird act leaves an impression that the world's affairs are not in suchbad hands after all. Posa does not convince the king's mind, but hefinds his heart and wins his confidence. One has the feeling that, if hebide his time and use some tact, he can accomplish all that he desires.But to our amazement he gives up the king and enters upon a desperategame of double-dealing in which he deceives everybody. He forms the planof sending Carlos to the Netherlands as the leader of a revolt. Of thisplan he says nothing to his friend, nor does he tell him of his own newrelation to the king. Instead he wraps himself in mystery and asksCarlos for his letter-case. This he turns over to the king, and gets awarrant for the arrest of Carlos. The young prince, suspecting quitereasonably that he has been betrayed, goes to Eboli for enlightenment.Here Posa finds him and draws his dagger upon the woman, as if she werethe possessor of some terrible secret,--which in fact she is not. Thenhe relents and arrests Carlos without explanation. He now writes acompromising letter which he knows will cause his own death. Then, aftersome delay, he goes to Carlos and tries to explain his strange conduct,and while he is telling his story the bullet of the king's assassinfinds him. Carlos mourns the Great Departed as a pattern of unexampledheroic virtue, but one can have little sympathy with the panegyric,especially after one learns that Posa was a traitor from the beginning.

There would be little profit in discussing the last two acts of 'DonCarlos' with respect to their inherent reasonableness. It is possible toframe an intelligible theory of Posa's conduct, but not one which isperfectly coherent, and least of all one which shall harmonize with theimpression produced by the first three acts. There we have an amiableidealist, whom we can at least understand; here a madman smitten, likeFiesco, with a mania for managing a large and dangerous intrigue all inhis own way, and accomplishing his ends by modes of action which seem tohim heroic, but to the ordinary mind utterly preposterous. Thus heaccounts for his failure to confide his plans to Carlos by saying thathe was 'beguiled by false delicacy',--which seems to mean that hisrelation to the king was felt by him as a breach of friendship. But howstrange that a man with public ends in view should feel thus under thecircumstances! So too his self-sacrifice is nothing but heroic folly,since his death in no way betters the chances of Carlos for escape. Theflight would have had a better chance of success had Posa omitted hisheroics altogether and quietly planned to escape with his friend. Infine, we have to do here with entirely abnormal psychic processes. Thereader and still more the spectator is bewildered by Posa, and does notknow any better than Carlos and the king know how to take him.[71]

Turning now to the portrait of the king we find there too the traces ofa wavering purpose. The original conception was dark as Erebus. In thefirst act, more especially in the first act as originally printed, theKing of Spain is painfully suggestive of a wicked ogre swooping in upona nursery of naughty children. Such an insanely jealous, swaggering,domineering, cruel fanatic is too loathsome to be interesting. Then camethe thought, suggested partly by the reading of Brantome and Ferrera, ofpresenting Philip's character in a more favorable light and making himthe center of tragic interest,--a thought which was neither given up norconsistently carried out. In October, 1785, Schiller wrote to Koernerthat he was reading Watson and that 'weighty reforms were threateninghis own Philip and Alva.' The Rev. Robert Watson's history by no meansidealizes Philip, but it credits him with sincerity, vigilance,penetration, self-control, administrative capacity and a 'considerableshare of sagacity' in the choice of ministers and generals,--not analtogether mean list of kingly qualities. On the other hand, inMercier's book[72] Philip appears as the embodiment of all thosequalities which the Age of Enlightenment regarded as odious in a ruler.Thus, just as in the case of Fiesco, Schiller found himself pulled thisway and that by his authorities; and the result of his attempt to graftan impressive monarch upon the stock furnished by St. Real's jealoushusband is a Philip who does not fully satisfy either the historic senseor the poetic imagination.

For Schiller, of course, a truly great monarch needed to have a tenderheart; so Philip was given certain sentimental traits. He feels theloneliness of his station. In spite of his seeming coldness the pleadingof Carlos for affection touches him, and he gives orders that henceforthhis son is to stand nearer to the throne. For the purpose of exhibitingthe king's magnanimity we have the anachronistic scene in which he ismade to pardon Medina Sidonia for the loss of the great armada,--anevent which happened twenty years later. Then he becomes suspicious ofDomingo and Alva and longs for an honest man to tell him the truth. Andwhen the man appears the king is most surprisingly open-minded. 'Thisfire', he says to Posa,

Is admirable. You would fain do good, Just _how_ you do it, patriot and sage Can little care.

So Philip is a patriot and a sage, glowing with the holy fire ofhumanity; and as such he even deigns to explain his policy and to enterinto a contest of magnanimity with Posa. But the large-hearted monarchof whom we get a glimpse in this scene is soon reduced back to thejealous husband of St. Real, and his jealousy is closely patterned uponthat of Othello. The Philip of the last two acts is sometimes pitiable,sometimes repulsive, never great. One is not very much surprised when hehires an assassin to kill Posa, instead of handing him over to the law.

Of the remaining characters the queen is the most interesting. In herSchiller for the first time depicts a woman convincingly. His Elizabethis perhaps a shade too angelic,--she is an ideal figure like all hiswomen,--but winsome she certainly is. One is a little startled by thereadiness with which she approves Posa's treasonable plan of arevolution to be headed by Don Carlos, but in this play the sentiment ofpatriotism cuts no figure anywhere. The principal characters are alloccupied with the idea of 'humanity', and are not troubled by anyscruples arising out of national feeling.

Taken as a whole 'Don Carlos' is too complicated to yield an unalloyedartistic pleasure. It suffers from a lack of simplicity andconcentration. There is material in it for two or three plays. Thedouble intrigue of love and politics becomes toward the end veryconfusing. The confusion is increased by the unexpected turn given tothe character of Posa, and reaches a climax when we learn from the GrandInquisitor that _he_ has been pulling all the strings from first tolast, and that the entire tragedy was foreordained in the secretarchives of the Holy Office. The unity of interest is marred by the factthat in the last two acts the real hero, Don Carlos, drops into thebackground as the helpless tool of the incalculable marquis. And Carlos,too, sometimes acts rather unaccountably; for example, when he supposesthat the wanton _billet-doux_ signed 'E.' can come from the queen, ofwhose purity and high-mindedness he has just had convincing evidence.Then again his conduct toward the Princess Eboli in the love scene isvery singular,--one might say amazing. And there are some other suchdefects, which concern the stage more than the reader and which, byskillful acting and judicious excision, can be reduced to insignificantproportions. When well played 'Don Carlos' produces a powerfulimpression. For the reader it is a noble poem containing a largeingredient of Schiller's best self.

The Weimar of Schiller's first acquaintance--arrived there July 21,1787--consisted of a petty provincial court plus an unsightly village.The inhabitants numbered about six thousand. Of the space built overabout one-third was occupied by the buildings of the court, much of theoutlying modern Weimar being then under water. The streets were narrow,muddy lanes, the houses plain and poor. And yet the sluggish littleplace, so unprepossessing in all material ways, was already beginning toassert that claim to glory which has since been conceded to it by allthe world. Princely patronage of art and letters was by no means unknownelsewhere in Germany, but it was usually a matter of graciouscondescension on the one side and grateful adulation on the other. Verydifferent in Weimar, where Goethe was not only a member of the Council,but the duke's most intimate friend and trusted adviser. In his heartKarl August cared less for aesthetic matters than is often supposed, buthis mother, the Dowager Duchess Amalie, patronized art for the real loveof it. Poetry and music were as the breath of life to her, and her tastein poetry had been trained by the greatest living master. Aside fromGoethe, two other distinguished writers had found a home in Weimar. Thekindly but changeable Wieland, not really one of the _dii majores_,but so regarded at the time, had lived there since 1772; Herder, muchmore nobly endowed, but less amiable and less popular, since 1776.

At the time of Schiller's advent Goethe was still in Italy, whither hehad gone the previous autumn to find relief from the miseries ofduodecimo statesmanship. Karl August and the reigning Duchess Luise werealso absent, but several minor notables of the court circle had remained'in town', and the dowager duchess was giving aesthetic teas as usualin her easily accessible 'castle' at Tiefurt. Wieland and Herder werelikewise at home. On his arrival Schiller was taken charge of by theBaroness von Kalb, who was awaiting her soul's affinity with feverisheagerness. Her excitement at seeing him again amounted to a 'paroxysm'which made her ill for a week. Then she grew better and her emotionsgradually found the level of a friendliness too passionate to be calledPlatonic, but not sinful in the lower sense. As for Schiller, hedevotedly let himself be loved and introduced to Weimar society, thepair making no concealment of their liking for each other. At first hefelt some compunctions on account of the absent husband, who might beannoyed by gossip. It pleased him to observe, therefore, that in Weimarsuch a friendship was taken as a matter of course and treated withdelicacy.[73] 'Charlotte' he wrote to Koerner, 'is a grand, exceptional,womanly soul, a real study for me and worthy to occupy a greater mindthan mine. With each forward step in our intercourse I discover in hernew manifestations that surprise and delight me like beautiful spots ina broad landscape.'

For several months he played this unwholesome role of cicisbeo toCharlotte von Kalb. Then another and very different Charlotte crossedhis path and quickly taught him the better way.

The story of Schiller's gradual adjustment to the Weimar _milieu_ istold very fully in his frequent letters to Koerner. He called upon Herderand Wieland, and was received with 'amazing politeness' by the one, withloquacious cordiality by the other. Herder knew nothing of his writingsand regaled him with idolatrous talk about Goethe. Wieland knew allabout him except that he had not yet seen 'Don Carlos'; criticised hisearly plays frankly as lacking in correctness and artistic finish, butexpressed the utmost confidence in him nevertheless. He was received atTiefurt, but did not like the dowager duchess: her mind, he reported,was very narrow; nothing interested her but the sensuous. A few dayslater he heard that 'Don Carlos' had been read to a select assembly atTiefurt and had not made a good impression; there had been causticcriticism of the piece, particularly the last two acts, and Wieland, whowas present, had not stood up for it. This led to a coolness towardWieland. By the end of three weeks Schiller had despaired of Weimar andwas miserable. He thought of leaving the place in disgust.

In August he spent a week at Jena as the guest of Professor Reinhold,who was about to begin lecturing upon Kant and was predicting that aftera century the Koenigsberg philosopher would have a reputation like thatof Jesus Christ. Reinhold's enthusiasm led Schiller to read some ofKant's shorter essays, among which a paper upon universal history gavehim 'extraordinary satisfaction'. From Reinhold came also the assurancethat it would be easy to secure a Jena professorship. The idea did notat once take hold of him in the sense of becoming a definite purpose,but it tallied with his inclination. His experience with 'Don Carlos'had left him in doubt whether the drama was after all his true vocation,and he had already begun to work fitfully upon a history of the DutchRebellion.

So he decided to remain a little longer in Weimar and devote himself tohistorical writing; and, this resolution formed, life at once began toopen more pleasantly before him. He saw that he had made the mistake oftaking the Weimar magnates too seriously; of imagining that they wereall sitting in judgment upon him, and that it was of the greatestimportance to win their favor. 'I begin to find life here quitetolerable,' he wrote early in September, 'and the secret of it--you willwonder that it did not occur to me before--is not to bother my headabout anybody.' And indeed he had no reason to be disgruntled. Herderwas pleased with 'Don Carlos' and came out in its favor before theaesthetic tribunal of Tiefurt. Wieland noticed it favorably in the_Merkur_, spoke flatteringly of it in conversation and declared himselfnow convinced that Schiller's forte was the drama. Henceforth the twomen were fast friends and presently Schiller was toying with the thoughtof marrying Wieland's favorite daughter. 'I do not know the girl atall', he wrote, 'but I would ask for her to-day if I thought I deservedher.'[74] His scruple was that he was too much of a cosmopolitan to bepermanently contented with 'these people'. A simple-minded, innocentgirl of domestic proclivities would not be happy with him.

The autumn passed in quiet work devoted mainly to his 'Defection of theNetherlands'. The Duke of Weimar came home for a few days towards theist of October, but immediately went away again to Holland. Schiller didnot even see him. Evidently there was nothing to be hoped forimmediately in that quarter; he would have to rely upon himself. But hewas now in demand. The _Merkur_ was eager for contributions from hispen, and so was the _Litteratur-Zeitung_, whose extensive review factoryhad been shown him during his sojourn in Jena. Then there was thecomatose _Thalia_, which he determined to revive after New Year's.

In November he spent a few days at Meiningen, where his sisterChristophine was now living as the wife of Reinwald. He saw Frau vonWolzogen and Lotte (who was about to be married), but Bauerbach had lostits charm. 'The old magic,' he wrote to Korner, 'had been blown away. Ifelt nothing. None of all the places that formerly made my solitudeinteresting had anything to say to me.' On his return fate was lurkingfor him at Rudolstadt, where his friend, Wilhelm von Wolzogen,introduced him to Frau von Lengefeld and her two daughters, 'Bothcreatures ', Schiller wrote, 'are attractive, without being beautifuland please me much. You find here considerable acquaintance with recentliterature, also refinement, feeling and intelligence. They play thepiano well, which gave me a delightful evening.' The elder daughter,Karoline, was married unhappily to a Herr von Beulwitz, from whom sheafterwards separated to marry Wilhelm von Wolzogen. She was a woman ofmuch literary talent, which found employment later in a novel, 'Agnesvon Lilien', and in her excellent memoir of Schiller. The other daughterwas unmarried and bore the auspicious name of Charlotte.

Lotte von Lengefeld, whose memory Is cherished with idealizingtenderness by the Germans, was now twenty-one years old,--a demuremaiden whose eyes spake more than her tongue. She had long since won theheart of the Baroness von Stein, who had introduced her at the Weimarcourt and held out to her the hope of becoming a lady-in-waiting to theDuchess Luise. Goethe was fond of her and did not omit to send heraffectionate greetings from distant Italy. Some time before, she hadspent a year with her mother and sister in Switzerland for the purposeof improving her French; and on the way home, in the summer of 1784, theparty had caught a glimpse of Schiller in Mannheim. Now the sisters wereliving in a sort of idyllic solitude at Rudolstadt, cut off from thegreat world, absorbed in their books, their music, and the memories ofthat happy year in Switzerland. Karoline von Wolzogen writes, inspeaking of this occasion:

My sister was seemingly in every respect a desirable match for Schiller. She had a very winsome form and face. An expression of purest goodness of heart enlivened her features, and her eyes flashed only truth and innocence. Thoughtful and susceptible to the good and the beautiful in life and in art, her whole nature was a beautiful harmony. Of even temper, but faithful and tenacious in her affections, she seemed created to enjoy the purest happiness.

Making all needful allowance for the partiality of a sister, one cannotwonder that the visitor went on his way with the feeling that Rudolstadtmight be a good place in which to spend the summer.

The condition of his mind was certainly such as to facilitate thedesigns of Providence. In January, 1788, he wrote to Korner as follows:

I am leading a miserable life, miserable through the condition of my inner being. I must have a creature about me who belongs to me; whom I can and must make happy; in whose existence my own can grow fresh again. You do not know how desolate my soul is, how dark my mind; and all not because of my external fortune,--for I am really very well off so far as that is concerned,--but because of the inward wearing out of my feelings.... I need a medium through which I can enjoy the other blessings. Friendship, taste, truth and beauty will produce a greater effect upon me when a continual succession of sweet, beneficent, domestic feelings attune me to joy and warm up my torpid being.

In mid-winter Lotte von Lengefeld came to Weimar for the social seasonand Schiller saw her occasionally with steadily increasing interest.Their famous correspondence, beginning in February, 1788, is at firstvery reserved, very formal and decorous, but soon begins to bewray thebeating of the heart. 'You will go, dearest Fraeulein', writes Schilleron the 5th of April, as Lotte was about to return to Rudolstadt, 'and Ifeel that you take away with you the best part of my present joys.' Amonth later she had found him lodgings in the neighboring village ofVolkstedt, and then came a delightful summer idyl, which prolongeditself until the middle of November,--an idyl not of love-making, forSchiller could not yet pluck up the courage for that, but of spiritualcomradeship. To quote Karoline again: